> People pleasing, in my extensive personal experience, is a process of guessing what other people want, or what will make them think favorably of us, and then acting accordingly.
People pleasing isn't caring about other people. It's being selfish and manipulative in interactions with other people (often without realizing it). Quite the opposite.
aka reciprocal altruism.
As I've aged, I've embraced transactional relationships.
My metaphor is "playing catch". Toss the ball, hope your partner tosses it back. Repeat. The goal is to keep the game going.
Some one doesn't throw the ball back, oh well, move on to next partner.
Works remarkably well for children, lovers, coworkers, grocery store checkers, and every other relationship in my life.
I'm curious how you actually follow through on that with children. It's hard to move on from them (without inflicting lifetime psychological trauma, anyway).
But universally, I try to meet everyone, especially children, where they're at. Children get a lot more chances to learn how to throw the ball back. And I always leave the door open.
TMI: one of the biggest surprise to me is connecting with nieces / nephews when they're much older, when we didn't particularly like each other earlier.
Such a weird assumption to make ...
I under no circumstance assumed that OP says "house ape" to his sons face .... did you?
Maybe I'm the odd duck here.
Also known as "tit for tat" in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, a very successful strategy.
Be transparent, honest, and authentic. Do not ever waiver from this; white lies and false smiles quickly snowball into a life lived out of alignment.
Let's say John is this guy who is "transparent, honest, and authentic, and never waivering."
And say Jack, John's friend, is addicted to playing Overwatch.
John comes by and says, "Jack, you shouldn't play Overwatch. You are wasting your time and energy."
Jack responds, "I know, but just this one match."
John comes back a week later and says, "Jack, I am really fucking frustrated you are still playing that shitty game. I want you to quit right this fucking moment." The article advised to never hide your emotions, so I am following that mantra.
How is Jack going to feel after that? Is he going to stop playing video games? Have parents yelling stopped children from playing Minecraft?
No. Why? The world really isn't that simple. Just saying "Be honest all the time" is the worst advice you can give. The principle is nice and impressive (because you always keep it!) but in reality, John is either a loner or a hypocrite.
Consider Steve, one who wields both self-reliance and people-pleasing, visiting Jack who is still addicted to Overwatch. Steve knows Overwatch is killing Jack's life, and deeply concerned for him. But he does the not lazy thing and waits. Instead of admonishing Jack, Steve becomes interested in Jack. Steve asks Jack how this game works, which hero he is playing, etc.
Then Jack opens up to Steve, which, in due time, can allow Steve to change Jack's mind.
If you want to have the feeling that you changed people's minds, be honest all the time. But if you actually want to change people's minds, then don't be honest all the time. Utilize white lies.
In that sense, people who are always honest are incredibly selfish.
In the quotation far above, I would just add two more words. To myself. Be transparent, honest, and authentic to yourself.
Being honest to others always sounds cool, but is in reality excruciating lazy. So lazy that I wouldn't want a friend like that, ever. I want a friend who is more wise and less automatic about his choice between truths and lies.
1. The Selfish : You tell people what they want to hear.
2. The Truthsayer : You tell people what they need to hear.
3. The Altruistic : You tell people what they need to hear when they are ready.
I am assuming John cares about Jack. If he still ignores Jack, then John is part of the Selfish. He is misled by just short-term benefits.
The Selfish and the Altruistic appear to do the same thing initially: not say anything nor interrupting during Overwatch. But they end differently. The Selfish ends his thought with just that moment. The Altruistic waits with intent to strike.
This is not a dichotomy between people who lie and are egotistical VERSUS people who are always honest. There is a third group of people who are both caring and more prudent with their tools. They are the Altruistic, those who wait to tell people exactly what they need to hear. And the Altruistic ultimately change people and society, because they understand people and society better.
They know how persuasion works. Truthsayers don't. In fairness, truthsayers die a lonely death, without having made meaningful change. Their audience was only themselves.
I'm interested to learn some more. Is it your personal classification or do you base it on some research, literature etc.? Could you recommend something to read on a subject of extra-personal development?
If I had to trace my thoughts, I would point to Lord Chesterfield, Neil Strauss, and Dale Carnegie, in that order.
Also lots of efforts to change people's (read: friends) behavioral patterns. I think, especially for psychology, most valuable insights come from experience, not books. Read the books, and apply the principles.
Understanding naysayers' concerns, and learning a ready answer if they ultimately don't seem valid can be a good use of time. Giving a whole lot of air time to someone who has a foregone conclusion that they think merits some transparent rhetorical game is not.
I never implied anything about stupidity. My claim is this sort of behavior is not conducive to change.
Furthermore, is Steve actually listening?
Of course he is. You are missing the point. Or you just haven't met that many people like Steve.
Understanding naysayers' concerns, and learning a ready answer if they ultimately don't seem valid can be a good use of time.
Absolutely. You should hold that standard for yourself. But just because you hold that standard for yourself doesn't mean the world all of a sudden is open to criticism.
Have a vision for what the ideal world is, but do not be deluded when modeling the state of the real world. If you think this is just transparent rhetoric game, you seriously misunderstand the general population of human beings. And most likely, yourself. If you have a brain that remotely resembles mine, then you have emotions, biases - structural flaws in our brain. Understand those first. Reading LessWrong will help.
If you are defining honest as some midpoint between a white lie and an asshole, then what is being honest? Not being completely honest, but just somewhat honest?
Then your "honest" is a healthy mix of white lie and complete honesty.
That's Steve.
Seriously, I am completely sick and tired of this idea people have of excusing their assholery by claiming they're being "honest", and that showing even the most modicum of common decency, common sense, and empathy is somehow "hiding their emotions" and being dishonest. It's not.
It's quite ridiculous.
Part of me wants to say that then maybe we should teach honesty differently. Instead of putting the virtue on a pedestal, we should use it as a tool when it is most fit.
If a white lie will engender a win-win relationship, use that.
Ultimately what we want is betterment of the other person and myself, and honesty is not always the answer.
Honesty is an endpoint, with the other side being dishonesty (including lies). On a separate axis, you would have maybe "gentleness of communication". On a third axis, orthogonal to the first two, you might have "intent", ranging from benevolent to malevolent.
So, complete honesty would be a plane. Some parts of the plane are difficult to reach (completely honest, completely gentle, completely benevolent), and may be impossible depending on the situation (timing, your relationship with the person, etc), and your own skills of communication.
"Asshole" would be a cloud within that volume, mostly floating around where "malevolence" and "harshness" have high values. None of these things are binary values, though. The soft edges fade into each other; we're working with shades of grey.
Jack responds, "I know, but just this one match."
Jack knows it's bad for him.
Let me ask, What do you live for? Why are you continuing your life on this planet? What will make you not regret on your deathbed?
For me, life is a festival. I am here to enjoy all the attractions. The scrumptious food, the unforgettable experiences, and the thrilling rides.
But nowadays I am realizing that a big part/joy of the festival is bringing other people to the festival, and showing them around. To enjoy, together. To eat, together. To experience, together.
That is why I worry about other people's problems. That is why Steve cares about John and is "intervening". Steve wants to bring John to the festival. And John wants to come, but he just needs a little help. Steve is there for him.
Speaking only for myself, but finally teaching myself how to avoid that kind of messianic thinking has been a considerable benefit to me in my old age.
Maybe when I grow older (I am just 21), I will become more "realistic" and altruism will not make me happy. This is a sad possibility.
But I have met quite a few people much, much older than I am (40-70 years old) who are happy changing the world for the better.
You only live once, why not set the bar high? That is how they approach the world. Having that sort of "mission" (because it really is a mission, not just a goal or a dream) makes their lives fulfilling and quite inspiring.
They think about what they will do when they grow up, when they are 60, or 90.
To me, they have much more youth to them than some of my friends who have already lost their dreams.
I have no idea, because I am so young still, but seeing people like that makes me think: age really is just a number.
Ah yes, quite. Carry on then.
Someone that always offers a harsh unvarnished and negative opinion on things usually gets a reputation as a jerk. Someone who is always trying to please everyone gets a reputation as a spineless brown-noser. In the real world, how you say something is often even more important than exactly what you say. If you are charming you can convince more people of more things, and political capital is a real thing that matters all the way down to individual relationships—you have to pick your battles. Throw in culture, sexism, racism, moods, and innumerable other contexts and things become very subtle.
That's what bothers me about these pop science articles: nothing is that simple. Maybe an article like this triggers you to evaluate yourself and say "hey, I do try to please others too much", but then again maybe you need the opposite advice. The bottom line is you have to gauge for yourself how your behavior is affecting relationships and whether you are getting what you want out of life.
But just because you were persuaded by one-hundred (be honest all the time) doesn't mean it's the best method for everyone.
What we need is an accurate model of fifty, and personalized solutions for those at zero or one-hundred. Skip the first step, you have no structure to hold you.
That is not being authentic, and that's the problem. In our heads we know what we want, but we ask for something else.
Why do you want your friend to get off the computer. To be off the computer? No. You miss your friend and you want him to hang out with you. You are worried that he is missing out on life by living in the game and you're both going to pay for it later.
Just ask, man.
> In our heads we know what we want, but we ask for something else
I think we know when we're frustrated or angry, but they're reactions to other emotions like fear and confusion.
That's hard to realise in the middle of frustration/anger.
And hard to articulate when you're talking to your buddy about his gaming habits.
There is saying, "you can shear a sheep over and over, but you can only skin it once." Learn to shear.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 : "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing."
To paraphrase: truth without love (e.g. being an asshole) is just ineffective noise. (Conversely, love without truth is not love at all.)
Not always. It depends on the culture. Some people will think you're an asshole just for disagreeing with them. Some people will think you're an asshole because you smile crooked. Some people will think you're an asshole because you aren't speaking their language and using their terminology.
Maybe I think you're an asshole just for suggesting this.
I think there's a line between being tactful and being manipulative and it may be different for everyone. For example you seem to think that Steve is telling a "white lie by omission" but I don't. Unless Steve was dishonest if questioned about his motivation or Steve was trying to pretend to be into the game rather being interested in Jack and his interests I wouldn't consider that being dishonest.
Here is the problem though. Much like the juxtaposition of equality and liberty, our beliefs about honesty and our intuition about honesty belie each other. (This might not make much sense but bear with me here.)
If we believe that "Being honest always" is good (and that is what the article espouses), then we have already created a huge contradiction within ourselves. By holding that belief, you feel slightly righteous, but not quite so accurate.
Because you can't always be honest. By holding that belief, you are always selling yourself short.
But if you believe "I will use honesty and white lie to the best of my ability to do the most good for the other person", then you have an accurate (and also quite beautiful) map of the world.
Hope that answers your point.
> "Jack, you shouldn't play Overwatch..."
This is judgement, which implies ego. The indicator here is "shouldn't". Ego isn't an authentic representation of self, it is fiction. If we can become aware of ego and avoid following it's incessant needs, we are closer to ego-lessness which can contribute significantly to happiness.
So in the end, being authentic and transparent without ego, the original statement may be something like:
> "Jack, I don't like to play overwatch, I would rather (do x,y,z)"
Great book for anyone seeking - Eckhardt Tolle - "A new earth" - be warned, skip chapter 1!
When you detect this from yourself or others, you are best advised to steer the wording/conversation so it's factual and not a guilt-trip. If you cannot, you will find yourself in a very frustrating place.
Thanks for the book recommendation! I loved The Power of Now.
A good book on this subject is "Difficult Conversations", a favorite of my wife's, which describes strategies for doing exactly this: being honest about your feelings without ruining someone else's day as a result.
Being honest does not mean you cannot exercise tact and discretion in the way you talk to people.
That is exactly what some people do in real life professionally in phycology, without the strong words(that denote lack of control). It works really well.
In order to illustrate this think on "Kitcken nightmares" tv program, or something like "Hermano mayor" on Spanish TV.
I use to do the same thing with friends and people that demand my help. Loner? Quite the contrary, help someone get out of a hole and he-she will be your friend forever.
I have taken people out of drugs, or gangs,prostitution this people will give their life for me. There are few things as rewarding in life(it is also a pain in the ass while you do follow the process but it is worth it).
Of course you need education in order to do that. You don't need to say you are "fucking frustrated", in fact if you are frustrated you can't help anyone.
There are masters at this, like in anything,and if you do that you will learn with every person you help. After some people you see patterns and being effective becomes easier.
I didn't know that algae responded so well to honesty.
Assuming that you meant psychology, there's a huge difference between hearing something from a professional psychologist and from a friend. It's a whole different relationship, with different words. If a friend treated me like a patient, they'd stop being a friend.
For John to be authentic, then he would need to first suss out why he feels so bothered by seeing John being addicted to playing Overwatch.
Meaning, there is something that John is unaware of his own psyche that lead to feeling irritated by Jack's addiction. Being unaware of that means he might be _seen_ as transparent or authentic or honest -- you certainly did -- but he's not actually in integrity.
Also, what you described with Steve is called rapport in NLP, or ethos in rhetorics. It's not people-pleasing, so much as matching impedance and getting inside someone else's space. People-pleasers tend to be too self-absorbed to be able to fully enter someone else's mindspace and establish rapport. Unless that person is on the psychopathy spectrum.
I agree with you on all of your points. With a feeling, you should figure out what caused it, and then figure out what caused that, and then recurse backwards until you actually get to the issue. Jerry Talley who taught intimacy at Stanford some time ago has a great lecture on this.
Where we disagree (but not actually, because it's so trivial), is labelling. If you define people-pleasers as those who cannot create rapport because they are self-absorbed, I couldn't agree with you more.
But part of me rejects that definition because then those people-pleasers aren't actually pleasing people.
Unless we are strictly going off the negative connotation of the word (which makes sense), the labelling behind this concept can only become confusing.
Great points, nevertheless. Couldn't have said it better myself.
Do you know if it is available online?
Your point on people-pleasing: that if they are too self-absorbed to form rapport, then they are not really people pleasing. In my experience talking and interacting with people, that is exactly it: folks will see themselves as pleasing others, but in reality, they are not actually doing so, because they are not doing so in integrity. That is the read I on "people pleasers", and that is the read I get from that article. For me, if someone is pleasing others and they are doing so in integrity, I don't see the issue with that. In general, that that rarely happens.
As for the recursion, that is the basic path but it isn't as simple as that. For one thing, fhe intellect alone is inadequate for the task. This was why I was talking about awareness, not intellect. When there are deeper rooted issues, the emotional attachment might even hijack the intellect to come up with rational explanations on why the deeper issues should not be explored.
My exploration of this comes from the meditation / shamanic / psychonaut approaches, and not clinical psychology. Where you can go if you dig impeccably and with an open mind will go to some really strange places. I'd love to see or talk with someone to see if the implications from those strange places changes or inflects effective altruism and infinite ethics.
That's some pretty impressive hand-waving. The more likely outcome is that Jack keeps playing his game and Steve just wasted a bunch of time trying and failing to manipulate his "friend".
I suppose one way you can have that experience is practice actively trying to change people's behaviors. It's absolutely fascinating.
I don't think the author want people to be totally honest always, like, "Hi dear colleague. I think your dog is stupid. And, by the way, you are, too."
Instead, I imagine that fairly many people tend to, when their friends say "Do you want to hang out with us doing this?", they answer "yes" just to please their friends. Although in fact they might have wanted to suggest something else instead. And in these cases, the advice in the article can sometimes? often? be useful. I.e. to be more transparent and honest with your friends about what makes you happy.
If you interpret a piece of advice with the mindset that "perhaps this is good advice in some situations, when might that be?", then it can be helpful and useful to you (or to other people — to me, when I was younger, for example).
But if you interpret it like "always do this", then a piece of advice that is actually good in some situations, has been lost.
(I suppose the article can be rewritten / reworded, to make it easier to interpret it in a "good and useful" way.)
Indeed, it's passive-agressive behaviour rooted from low self-esteem. "I'll cater to you, so you'll return the favour", but when this isn't reciprocated (since the receiver isn't even aware of this "business transaction"), the giver is feeling anger (sadness).
I think we have just faced a simple labeling problem, with people-pleasing as the ultimate vague word.
I specifically hate those who give to get. And when they give and don't get, they become passive-aggressive.
If I have low self-esteem, here is how I might behave. For the purposes of this example, I am Jack and the other person is Elizabeth.
1. I want care and attention from Elizabeth.
2. I give care and attention to her, hoping I will get them back.
3. When she doesn't give me care and attention I "deserve", I become passive-aggressive towards her.
Some people believe giving is the prerequisite to acceptance. They think they are not good enough. So in step 2, Jack sets an invisible contract with Elizabeth, without her knowing. He will give, give, give, and one day he will freak out.
Elizabeth has no idea why.
The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida is a great follow-up. The guru stuff is sometimes overwhelming, but there are good ideas in that book.
There is also a fantastic summary/teaser of the book on FightMediocrity (YouTube channel).
It's one of those that's hard to grasp, more of a lifetime read, when you gather more and more experiences, so that the suggestions make more sense.
Those two books, "Models" by Mark Manson and "Slight edge" by Jeff Olson probably changed my life the most.
Getting "Models" and "Slight edge" samples on Kindle now. Thanks for the recommendations!
Being nice is not the same as compassion. I'm glad you found a book that helped you understand it.
However, based on this and your other comments on this thread, I think there is more to discover about this. There is a whole range of things related to love (and I don't mean romance) I think is missing from your discourse.